Her foothold steadied. She pushed back dripping hair and looked up. Black walls all round her – very black – the sky a still, deep blue – light coming from it. And against the light and the blue of the sky, Dale standing there, black and tall and silent, looking down. She said his name in a gasping whisper.

“Dale-” And then, “I fell-”

It wasn’t true. He had thrown her down. She knew that, but she couldn’t believe it – not yet – not so soon – it was too dreadful. How do you believe a thing like that about your own husband?

She called his name again and stretched up her hands to him.

“Dale -get me out!”

He moved when she said that. She heard him laugh.

“What a silly woman you are, Lisle! Don’t you understand even now? Don’t you understand that all the things I told you this afternoon were true – only they weren’t true about Rafe, they were true about me? Lydia had to go because her going saved Tanfield. If it’s a choice between Tanfield and any woman on earth, Tanfield has it every time. That’s what you’ve been up against all along, my dear. You didn’t care about Tanfield, and why didn’t I sell it and go and live at the Manor? The very first time you said that to me I thought how much I should like to kill you. But you’ve had all the luck till now. I thought I’d done the trick the day you were nearly drowned. I heard you calling, but the others didn’t – I took good care of that. And if it hadn’t been for that damned meddlesome grocer or whatever he was, drowned you would have been, and a lot of trouble saved. You were lucky over the car too. I took a risk there and half tried to back out at the last minute, because somebody might have seen the file marks on the track-rod. Anyhow after my urging you in front of Alicia to have the steering seen to before you went home nobody could have pinned it on me. The disgruntled Pell came in handy there. I thought about that. And considering the way Lal had been chipping you, I didn’t really think you’d want to wait about at the garage with her.” He gave a sudden contemptuous laugh. “Oh well, you had the luck then, but it’s gone back on you now. Clever weren’t you, getting that detective woman down to watch me! Miss Silver – Private Investigations! You didn’t think I knew about that, did you? You shouldn’t have left her card in your bag. It was really very careless. But you needn’t think that either she or that damned policeman are going to have anything on me over this, because they’re not! You’ve provided me with a most convincing suicide letter – one of those pieces you wrote to Robson this morning. Do you remember it? I suggested it to you, and you thought it sounded a bit exaggerated. But you wrote it down, my dear, you wrote it down – and it would convince any coroner on this earth that you meant to do away with yourself.”

She said in a small, clear voice,

“Did you kill Cissie?”

His tone changed, became rough and unsteady.

“Why did you give her that damned coat?”

Her hair had fallen into her eyes again. She pushed it back. It was getting dark, but she could still see him.

“You took Rafe’s cigarette-case and it dropped there when you pushed her over, and Alicia found it. Even if Rafe saw you take it, you knew that he would never say-” Her voice broke suddenly. “Dale – let me out! I won’t say either – I promise I won’t – only let me out!”

She heard him laugh.

“What a hope!”

And with no more than that he turned and went away. She saw him go, the shortening of the black shadow standing up against the sky, and then the sky without any shadow there.

Dale was gone.

Chapter 44

DALE was gone – all in a moment between one breath and the next whilst she tried desperately for words that would recall the Dale who had loved her and whom she had loved, or move this dreadful stranger to let her go. No words had come and none were needed now, because Dale was gone. Just for a moment his going brought relief. The frantic effort to reach him, the terror of him standing there like a visible presence of evil – these were gone. There was a slow recovery, as from some sudden stroke of pain, but as this passed she began to see what it had left behind – desolation, the breakdown of all she had loved and trusted. He had gone, and he had left her here to die – she was to drown in this rocky pit. How long would it take for the tide to reach her? Perhaps an hour – she didn’t know.

Her first relief merged into an agony of fear. She screamed, and heard her voice come back to her from the rocky wall. It was a very hoarse, faint cry from a throat parched with terror. No one would hear it. There was no one to hear – unless the sound reached Dale and brought him back, strong and angry, to finish what he had begun. The thought was so dreadful that she dared not scream again. Not for a long, long time.

She stood there with the water up to her armpits, listening. There was no sound to listen for. The sky was getting darker and she could see the stars. She thought of all the times when she had seen them with a quiet mind. She thought, “I shall never see them like that again,” and suddenly her mind was clear and quiet under the stars. Life – She thought, “It goes on wherever you are.” She thought, “Dale can’t kill me. I shall go on.”

She stopped being afraid.

Presently she called again with all her strength, and went on calling. Dale wouldn’t come back now. He would be hurrying to the aerodrome. It was all planned. He had taken the car and driven away, and presently he would be at the airfield, taking out his plane, taking off, sweeping up into the sky with a roar. Perhaps she would hear him. Perhaps he would fly overhead and look down to see if the tide was covering her yet.

He would be safe. No one would know that they had been together. She remembered his “Don’t tell anyone, darling. Let’s have this time to ourselves.” He had betrayed her with a kiss. She hadn’t told anyone. No one had seen her go-

She lifted up her voice and called again – and again – and again – desperately.

It was at this moment that Rafe Jerningham came down the steps from the sea wall. After one of the longest half hours of his life he was doing what he had made up his mind that he would never do. Lisle had not gone to her rendezvous as unseen as she had thought. A desperately unhappy young man had stood back among the trees and watched her go down towards the sea. A day or two ago he would have followed her, but now he could no longer trust himself. Something had happened between them, without any words, and it had happened with the horrifying suddenness of a thunder clap. He had driven her into Ledlington. Nothing had happened then, nor at lunch, nor as they came and went about the business of Cissie’s funeral. He had had to endure seeing her pale, strained, with that waiting patience in her eyes. He had played the part which he had played so long that no one guessed that it was a part at all. And then something had happened. What? He had no idea, but it was something which set an unendurable barrier between them.

He came down to dinner, and she wasn’t Lisle any longer – she was a stranger. She did not look at him. He felt her shrink when he approached her. All that he had ever had of her had been withdrawn, silently, irrevocably, without reason and without relenting.

“A god, a god our severance ruled,

And bade between our shores to be

The unplumbed, salt, estranging sea.”

The lines went through his head. They were most bitterly true. He accepted the severance, as he had always accepted it, but that it should become absolute at this of all moments was the final bitterness.

Days of suspicion darkening to a despairing certainty – moments, hours, when these suspicions seemed a foul miasma from his own corroding jealousy of Dale… There was a voice which talked with him in most unsparing accents – “You love Dale’s wife, and so – Dale is a murderer. You are eating your own heart, and because of that – Dale is a murderer. Lisle is the sun and the moon and the stars, and because they are out of your reach – Dale is a murderer.”